


White Tea Romance

by Ember_Keelty



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Yuri, animanga inspired, secret admirers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 13:27:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/913734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ember_Keelty/pseuds/Ember_Keelty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haruyo is a softball jock popular with other girls at her school.  One day, she gets an anonymous love letter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Tea Romance

            The Koichamachi Middle School home team was one ahead at the top of the seventh inning.  Their opponents had players on first and second, and no outs.  On the first pitch thrown to her, the next batter up hit a high line drive straight down the center.  It looked like an easy double, and the players on base took off running.

            Fukuhara Haruyo, shortstop for Koichamachi, took a running leap two feet into the air, caught the ball in her outstretched mitt, landed on second base, and, the moment she touched down, fired off a throw to first.  Just like that, the game was over.

            The audience erupted in the joyful shrieks of enraptured teenage girls.  The other Koichamachi players on the field converged on Haruyo to hug her, wring her hand, and slap her back.  "I think you bruised my hand, Fukuhara!" the first baseman called out jovially.  "You should be pitching hardball!"

            "Don't say that!" the catcher told her.  "When was the last time you saw a pitcher make a triple play?"

            "Haruyo-sama!"  The knot of players surrounding Haruyo began to get jostled about as a certain portion of the crowd rushed the field.  "You're amazing, Haruyo-sama!"  "Haruyo-sama, use my towel, please!"  "Haruyo-sama, do you need a drink of water?"

            Haruyo grinned at her teammates.  "Cover me, girls!" she said, then ducked down to crouch beneath eye level and stealthily slipped away from the throng.

—

            Rino Ayaka, Haruyo's friend and classmate, was waiting for her at their usual spot in a hollow at the center of the thick row of bushes that surrounded the park.  "There's a twig stuck to your ponytail," she said by way of greeting.

            "Yeah, yeah."  Haruyo hastily pulled it out.  Ayaka, as usual, showed not a hair out of place after clambering through the thicket — but then, since she'd gotten there first, she _had_ had a minute or two to fix herself up.

            "Regardless, you were very cool today, Haruyo," Ayaka said, smiling coyly.  "Even more so than usual.  We should do something special."  She handed Haruyo one of the two thermoses of cold, berry-scented white tea she had brought, and the girls sat down in the grass to drink from them — Haruyo cross-legged, Ayaka kneeling.

            "You bringing me something from your parents' teahouse after every game _is_ special," Haruyo told her.  "I know how expensive this stuff usually is."

            "Someone has to stop you from drinking that bottled syrupy brown swill you buy from vending machines if you can't get anything better," Ayaka said matter-of-factly.  "It's especially bad for you after a game out in the heat.  Between the sugar and the high caffeine content, it actually dehydrates you further. And since I always do it, it hardly makes for a fitting 'congratulations on your game-winning triple play'.  If you come with me to House of Jasmine, you can have another cup of anything you choose, as well as a pastry."

            Haruyo scratched her chin.  "Well, I think my teammates will probably want me to go out to dinner with them."

            "Excellent!" said Ayaka.  "Then we can have our dessert tea after you've gotten a proper meal in you.  Be sure to drink plenty of plain water at the restaurant."

            "Ayaka, it's a school night."

            "That's true.  You should probably limit your choice to white teas, or maybe a green blended with a nice herbal."

            "That wasn't really what I meant."  Haruyo was grinning though.  Sitting here in the cool grass and the warm sun, her head filled with the bright haze of a slowly fading adrenaline high and her mouth with the delicate taste of blueberries and white tea, talking to a beautiful, witty girl — it was nice.  Staying up carelessly late with Ayaka and drinking hot tea as the summer air cooled and the stars came out would also be nice.  There was no way she was really going to say no.

—

            When Haruyo opened up the park's community locker she had stashed her things in before the game, a piece of white paper fluttered out and landed on her shoe.  Haruyo picked it up, unfolded it, and read:

_Haruyo,_

_I believe that I am in love with you.  It doesn't matter to me even a little that we're both girls.  If you are at all interested in knowing who I am, please meet with me under the cherry tree out behind the school after tomorrow's last bell._

_Signed,_

_Your secret admirer_

_P.S.  It occurs to me, a bit belatedly, that these letters are supposed to contain something in the way of praise.  As such:  I have attended several of our boys' team's softball games just to see if anyone there plays as well as you do.  None of them come close._

            Haruyo's first thought was to wonder whether it was from Ayaka.  She hoped that it was — she had felt for a long time that there was more than a twinge of romance to their friendship, but had never said anything out of worry that she might lose what they already had — and it did sound a bit like her haughty presumption and baffling dry humor.  Then again, she might just be imagining that; it was difficult to tell the tone of written words, so this girl could just as easily be weird in a completely different way.  It seemed a little unlikely that Ayaka would ask her out the night _before_ confessing to her — but then, it was a "congratulations on your triple play" dessert tea she'd asked Haruyo to, and the triple play probably hadn't happened yet at the time this note was slipped into Haruyo's locker.

            Should she bring all this up to Ayaka that night?  Haruyo supposed that she would have to.  On the one hand, if the letter was from Ayaka, she was bound to be annoyed at her grand plan for her confession getting short-circuited like that.  But Haruyo knew herself well enough to know that she wouldn't be able to think about anything but the possibility that it _was_ from Ayaka until she knew for sure one way or another — and if that happened when a different girl showed up under the cherry tree, she would be left completely unprepared and with no clue what to say or do.

            Haruyo hoped that her team would pick somewhere nice and cheap for dinner, because she was probably going to be so distracted that she wouldn't even taste the food.

—

            "I found an anonymous love letter in my sports locker today," Haruyo told Ayaka, kneeling opposite her at the tea table while they drank their tea and ate their sweets.  House of Jasmine also had Western-style tables with chairs, which Haruyo thought were a bit more comfortable, but the low tables were closer to the windows and at a better angle for seeing the starry sky through them.  Besides, Ayaka preferred the traditional style, and she looked so elegant and feminine kneeling down.  "It was from a girl."

            "Is that so?  Well, it's hardly surprising.  You're quite popular with girls."  Ayaka took an unconcerned bite of her mochi.  This was very much not the reaction that Haruyo had been hoping for.

            "She wants me to meet her tomorrow," Haruyo continued.  "Honestly, I don't really know what to do about this."

            "Well, you can't stand her up," said Ayaka.  "If you're going to reject her, you'd better do it in person.  A maiden's heart can be delicate."

            "Of course I'm not going to stand her up!  Actually..."  She hesitated, but only for a moment.  If Ayaka disapproved of this sort of thing, she almost certainly would have made at least some disdainful comments about Haruyo's admirers in all the time they'd been spending together these past couple months.  "What I'm really wondering is whether or not I _should_ reject her."

            Ayaka arched her eyebrows.  "Now, that _is_ a little surprising.  If you like girls, you've had plenty of opportunities before now to take your pick of them and ask her out."

            "Well, it's not like I never _thought_ about it.  Sometimes when there are a bunch of fans around me I think, 'Oh, that one's the cutest!  I wonder how serious she is about this.  Maybe I should ask her on a date and find out?'  But then I get weirded out with myself, because they're _people,_ not a litter of puppies, and singling one of them out would be a lot more complicated than that.  In this case, though, it seems like whoever she is, she's already singled herself out."

            "Then I don't understand what you're confused about," Ayaka said.  "It should be simple.  You go.  You meet her.  If you think she's cute and interesting, you try dating her.  If you don't, you tell her that you're sorry and she seems like a lovely person, but unfortunately she isn't really your type.  For someone as honest as you, that should be easy."

            "I'm worried about how things will turn out if I do decide to date her.  What if she really idolizes me, and I end up breaking her heart because the only thing that makes _her_ special to _me_ is that she's the first person who asked me out?  Or what if _I_ end up really liking _her_ , and then it turns out that she just thinks of it as Class S and has been assuming from the beginning that we would both eventually end up with boys?"  Of course, Ayaka herself was also a complication, but Haruyo wasn't about to say that to her.  Not only was she not acting like she'd written the letter, but she didn't seem even the slightest bit jealous.  It was disappointing.

            "That's just like you, Haruyo."  Ayaka smiled indulgently at her.  "When girls date boys in middle school, that usually doesn't last forever either.  So why are you so afraid of problems that might arise because you're both girls?"

            "That's not exactly helpful," Haruyo told her.  "In fact, it's kind of the exact opposite of helpful."

            "Why?  Do you avoid cherry blossom festivals because you know that summer's coming?"

            It took Haruyo a few seconds to make sense of that question, since her idea of a cherry blossom festival was a low-key family picnic in a lively park with a boombox blaring pop music love ballads.  She was almost afraid to ask what Ayaka did.  "I just don't want anyone to get hurt, as quaint as that must sound to a devout Buddhist."

            "Oh, I'm hardly devout," Ayaka assured her.  "And it isn't quaint.  It's sweet and noble.  You're a compassionate person, Haruyo — so much so that it comes through even when you attempt to be sarcastic at me.  It's because you're so compassionate that I'm sure this won't end in the disaster you seem to think it will."

            "So..." Haruyo said thoughtfully.  "Whatever happens, I should just follow my heart, right?"  She quirked a tentative little smile.

            "Precisely.  So, you see, it's like I said:  for someone like you, it should be easy."

—

            That time of year, the cherry tree outside the school was swathed in scarlet and gold:  colors darker and more dramatic than the delicate pink of its spring mantle, but just as beautiful in their own way.  From the distance of the door exiting the schoolhouse, all that Haruyo could really make out of the figure standing beneath it was the chocolate-brown and celadon Koichamachi girls' uniform.  It only took her a few steps, though, before she was able to spot a familiar long, blue-black braid of hair.  Haruyo's heart, already racing, somehow sped up even faster.  With her adrenaline running so high, it was only natural for her to break into a sprint.

            "Ayaka?" she said as she slowed to a stop at the base of the tree.  "What are you doing here?"

            Ayaka smiled sweetly.  "Providing you with moral support, of course."

            "Oh."  Haruyo's heart fell.  "Uh.  That's nice and all, but I don't think I actually need it, and this is kind of a private thing, so..."  Ayaka's smile didn't change as she spoke, but her eyes seemed, somehow, to be laughing.  Seeing that, Haruyo's brain finally caught up to her heart and mouth.  "Wait a minute.  I never told you where the letter said to meet!"

            "That would have been unnecessary anyhow," Ayaka told her, "since I was the one who wrote it."

            Haruyo found herself simultaneously breaking into a smile and slapping a hand to her forehead in frustration.  "Okay, I don't understand anything.  Was this all some kind of joke?"

            Ayaka frowned.  "Haruyo, I hope you don't think that my jokes are that cruel."

            "Not usually," Haruyo admitted.

            "It's actually quite simple," Ayaka explained.  "For a while, I was hoping that you would ask me out, and when you didn't, it stood to reason that either you were too nervous about my possible reaction, or else you just weren't into that sort of thing.  If it was the latter, then I also had reason to be nervous about your reaction if I broached the subject.  If it was the former, though, I didn't want us carrying on like the insufferably clueless leads in a very silly romantic drama.  So, I wrote you that letter and then invited you out for tea assuming that you would bring it up and I would be able to get a read on your reaction.

            "Ayaka," Haruyo said, laughing, "that's not simple at all."

            "Not compared to your way of doing things, perhaps.  But you can't deny its efficacy."

            "All right, so why didn't you just end the charade before I left the teahouse last night?"

            "Would you really have wanted that?" Ayaka asked innocently.  "After all, it wouldn't have been as romantic as confessing love to each other under a cherry tree, and I know you enjoy romance as much as I do."

            "I think you've just spent more time confessing to your mastermind schemes than confessing love," Haruyo pointed out.  "Also, it's early autumn."

            "It is!" Ayaka agreed pleasantly.  "The leaves beginning to fall give the tree the beauty of imperfection, like a chip at the base of a masterwork teacup.  Our first kiss beneath it will have that same sort of beauty."

            Haruyo buried her face in her hands, partly to hide her blush.  "I don't know whether to feel insulted by your low expectations, or relieved that you aren't putting too much pressure on me."  Nevertheless, she brought her hands down to her sides, leaned in towards Ayaka, and closed her eyes as she also closed the distance between their lips.

            As usual, Ayaka was absolutely correct.


End file.
